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I have been reading tech folks lament the disappearance of dumb screens for years. I finally bought my first new TV in 2020, a Sony with Android TV. I have nev

I have been reading tech folks lament the disappearance of dumb screens for years. I finally bought my first new TV in 2020, a Sony with Android TV. I have never connected it to the Internet. Instead, it displays an AppleTV or a gaming machine. It has been an amazing reliable display at a reasonable price, every bit as good as the imagined ideal dumb TV. So why all the pearl clutching? Do other brands require Internet to turn on and display HDMI?

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> So why all the pearl clutching? Because we are going back to feudalism in terms of personal rights and freedoms. In 15 years will own no major possessionns - your electronics, car and appliances can be shut down remotely at any time because you make a tweet elon musk didn't like. And Asset Inflation will ensure noone owns a house. Na dyour door lock will be smart, so if you are behind on rent they will lock you out same day. And people on here will be chanting 'they are a private conoany they can do what they want'
- durnygbur 4y ago
  Also privacy-preserving practices and behaviors already nowadays flag or shadow ban the user assuming one is a bot or profile them as bad actors. Sometimes more content and services are exposed once the user reveals more personal data (e.g. browsing web through mobile phone vs. through PC with ads blocked). We are aiming into a very evil reality and there doesn't seem to exist anything stopping it.
shaklee3 4y ago
Android TV makes it a smart TV, so that was all for naught
xen2xen1 4y ago
There are stories of TVs just using open wifi, for one. Two, cheap 5g will probably let the TV manufacturers have a cheap way to get ads without wifi and send back screenshots of what you're watching like they do now over wifi. So the workarounds you mention are probably short term.
- Eleison23 4y ago
  [dead]
- nimbius 4y ago
  this is surprisingly simple to countermeasure, just pull the SMA antennae leads from the board, and cap the connectors with a few drops of metallic fingernail polish. for surface-mount antennae (which cant be used for 5g or 5ghz wifi) you would just brush the same metallic fingernail polish on the trace :)
  - czx4f4bd 4y ago
    And this is why I have avoided buying a smart TV for almost ten years now. A TV is a consumer product. I should not have to open it up and modify the fucking hardware just to make it work how I want.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      You didn't buy a smart TV for ten years because of a (frankly unlikely) hypothetical? I've bought smart TVs, not connected them to WiFi, and that was the end of it. You can hear whispers about all kinds of sneaky things like refusing to work, but some of the best TVs out right now are LG smart TVs that will function completely identically to a dumb TV if you don't connect them to the internet.
      - czx4f4bd 4y ago
        No, this is just one of many reasons I haven't yet bought a smart TV. I probably will give in this year, but only because I can finally afford something much larger than what I have today. Here's the thing: At the end of the day, a smart TV has capabilities that I don't need or want, including to change how it functions without warning or consent. However unlikely the possibility is, a smart TV still has the capability to connect to an open network, phone home, and start doing shit I don't want, which means I have to trust it to not do that. On the other hand, my old dumb TV has none of those capabilities, so I can trust it precisely because I don't need to trust it. I know it can't do anything except display what it receives on its inputs. Therefore, any time I've considered replacing my TV with a newer one, I've always weighed predictability against uncertainty and opted in favor of the predictability of what I own. Maybe that's overly paranoid of me, but at the end of the day, I just haven't wanted a new TV as much as I've wanted something I can trust.
xen2xen1 4y ago
Oh, and I forgot about Amazon Sidewalk or things like it mentioned elsewhere.
mrweasel 4y ago
> So why all the pearl clutching? Because the idea that a TV can spy on me is pretty repulsing. To be in compliance with the GDPR I suppose it should be pretty easy to disable, but the fact is that some moron thought that this was ever a good idea to begin with is infuriating. I don't think it's pearl clutching, it's anger, directed at both the manufacturer and the rest of the population that either doesn't know or care that they viewing habits are being tracked. Still I just take the same route as you, my TV is just never going to touch the internet. The angry part in me just want the EU to force TVs to display a small blink light in the corner of the screen anytime viewing data is leaving the TV.
- adave 4y ago
  Everything is being tracked anyways along with personal identifiable information on the internet, smartphone, security cams, HDMI box etc. Why the hate towards TV's? Is it bad or do people just hate ads? I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card.
  - Lio 4y ago
    > I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card. That's a foolish bet you would loose then. Some of us already directly pay extra for privacy. It's not just TVs, it's tracking in general for ad or for anything else. If you want to be tracked then I have no problem with that but I just want to be left alone.
    - adave 4y ago
      Privacy is an illusion at this point if you connect to the internet and do stuff. It's just who has your data and how they are using it. If you want to be left alone then start using usb drives and air gapped laptops. Still you can't stop your personal data like bank details,addresses,SSN etc to not be available since you probably use a public/private banking system. Once people figured out they can become billionaires off of other peoples data and governments got involved for national security the individuals privacy online is all but a myth.
bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
I have one of the TVs mentioned in the article, a TCL Roku TV, and I do the same as you: Apple TV only, never hooked the TV up to the internet. Very reliable, cheap, and dumb. I think most people just balk at the price of an external media device when their TV has “it” (but of course not the same quality “it”) built in, and so they end up with a crappy, data-mining, ad-riddled, experience. You get what you pay for.
anonymousab 4y ago
There are tvs that will stop working if they don't get an active connection to update/get new ads/send telemetry after some period of time. There are tvs that will simply connect to any open wifi network that they can. These traits are slowly but surely becoming unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen. Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.
- jmole 4y ago
  What TVs exactly?
  - somat 4y ago
    I run an open wifi acccess point and the neighbors samsung tv is the only thing using it... not sure of the exact model.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  > These traits are unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen. That is not true. For TVs is an inverse relationship between quality and how aggressive the "smart" parts are. The open WiFi thing was some low end Samsung, and it's been a long while since I've seen an open WiFi network that doesn't have a captive portal that would block the connection. And I've never seen a TV that would refuse to work without an internet connection, and I can't imagine anything but the most bottom end no-name TV trying to pull that.
- toast0 4y ago
  > There are tvs that will simply connect to any open wifi network that they can. Don't bring it to the airport or out shopping? Who has an open wifi network in range of their home? (I'm out of touch though, I live in the woods, and can only occasionally see my neighbor's networks, I get to use all the channels for myself, muhahaha) > Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable. Nobody is willing to run an ad program with cached ads. I tried to set one up at my previous job, because it made more sense than live ads, but nope... not going to happen; advertisers want real time control and stats.
nhchris 4y ago
> So why all the pearl clutching? Because it's part of a trend of our possessions turning hostile to us. It's hardware that you pay for and supposedly own, that betrays you, spies on you and acts against your interest, covertly or at least discreetly. That you are for now able to prevent it is besides the point. An implementation detail, that will change as soon as our corporate masters want it to.
- gorjusborg 4y ago
  This sort of business relies on the normalization of these practices through slow, incremental, change. Unfortunately, it seems to be working. Younger people see being measured, tracked, and advertised to as table stakes for having access to anything. I don't blame the younger folks for this, as much of the motivation for acceptance is the economics involved. They may not be able to afford all the 'requirements' of modern living if they had to pay the 'i am not the product' premium.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I once worked on part of a project for a certain kind of set-top streaming box (no, not one you've likely ever heard of). In discussions with the client they explained that it was impossible to get lower than about double the cost of a comparably-powerful Roku and still turn a profit, without supplementing with income from spyware, advertising, and various "partner programs" on the box. Which makes it damn hard to sell the things unless you've got some other angle to work (so, Apple can pull off $250 streaming boxes, but some new company? They better have a really good pitch, and they're gonna struggle more than they otherwise might to get on store shelves, which is a whole other thing). In our case they did have a niche they were targeting that meant they didn't want or need advertising and such, but the price point still hurt, and they couldn't do better without getting into adware and spyware.
sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
I bought a new Samsung TV about a year ago. It has smart stuff that I don't care to use as I have a PC connected and a Chromecast w/ Google TV. I just want it to display HDMI signals generated by one of those devices. On initial power-on, the TV aggressively pushed me to set up internet access and accept a terms & conditions statement. It took some degree of dancing to find a way past the setup wizard without completing these. I am very careful when I select inputs. If I hit the Input button on the remote to switch between devices, I need to make sure I go no further than one step left or right to select the other input. If I go too far, the next selections will tell me that I have still not set up internet and accepted the t&c's and I must do so before I use the feature. This happens regardless of whether I press 'Enter' to actively select them. I've actually had much your opinion for years, but the TV manufacturers really are stepping up their game. My previous Samsung smart TV I was able to use the "just don't configure it" approach and everything was peachy. The landscape is changing.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  It sounds like you are just making life hard on yourself. You could take a few minutes out of your day to set it up and not have to worry about it.
- sjf 4y ago
  I specifically bought a Samsung 'digital signage' display instead of a 'TV' because that was the closest I could find to a dumb TV, and I have the same experience. There is an accept terms & conditions popup that requires the internet that takes up the bottom third of the screen which comes up basically when doing anything with that involves the TV remote. Even if you do accept the terms the conditions, it comes back as soon as you are disconnected from the internet. I am extremely disappointed with the experience.
ortusdux 4y ago
Automatic content recognition (ACR) can be performed by the TV directly, so it can be video-source agnostic. https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smart-tv-snooping-features-a4840102036/ https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...
- jupp0r 4y ago
  How will it be tied to your identity?
  - brewdad 4y ago
    Did you pay cash for your TV? If not, then the retailer knows the serial # of the TV they sold you and who you are. If they partner with the manufacturer and share the sales data back to them (why wouldn't they? More $$$) then the TV maker has your identity.
    - jupp0r 4y ago
      What do you think is the probability of somebody random sitting in front of a TV right now being the person who bought it? I'd think it's fairly low. At some point of uncertainty, targeted advertising stops making sense and becomes counterproductive.
jtbayly 4y ago
I do volunteer IT work for a private school. One of the TVs quit working. It would turn on, but you couldn't select any of the inputs (eg HDMI). It wouldn't work until I registered it online with a verified email address and went through a long (multi-page) process on their website, where it asked me for all my favorite TV shows, used dark patterns to imply I needed to give them a Credit Card, etc. So, yes, the pearl clutching is for a reason.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Yikes, what brand?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Heh, I can't wait until one of these 2-bit TV manufactures goes out of business and the update website gets co-opted by some hackers that write a new firmware update that asks for things like peoples CC to use it.
    - justsomehnguy 4y ago
      Honestly? I wait for this to happen, preferably with a forced redirect to goatse.cx. THAT would improve the things.
    - CyanBird 4y ago
      Given the ass security that these things likely use, you might just be able to use man in the middle attacks against http and it might just work heh
OneLeggedCat 4y ago
> why all the pearl clutching? My vehicle has a cellular internet connection that I cannot easily disable. My insurance company is among the many that would love to get at that data. TV's are valuable enough that such a connection will be coming to them too eventually.
semiquaver 4y ago
Not sure about apple TVs but many set top boxes like rokus are just as bad if not worse in terms of content recognition and telemetry.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  AppleTV, by dint of being a product of a hardware company that has made privacy a part of its appeal, doesn't monetize your data. I have no doubt Apple can tell what we watch, but since they're not selling the data or using it to run ads on the device it doesn't bother me.
smusamashah 4y ago
On the other hand I bought a smart TV for youtube and other movie streaming apps. I am in UK and don't even need live TV and pay its licencing fee. Smart TV where I can watch movies, songs, play videos from my phone or computer is the TV i need.
wccrawford 4y ago
My new LG periodically turns itself on to tell me that if I connect it to the internet I can use voice commands. Before that, when it was connected, it would show me advertisements over top of my TV signal occasionally.
xyzzy123 4y ago
Like the flashing 12s time on a microwave, there's often a ui indicator that the tv is "not set up correctly". This severely vexes people with OCD, who want their TV set up "correctly" and maybe to receive updates, but also not to spy on them.
bumby 4y ago
My major gripe is that my smart tv updates its software all the time. When it does, it always seems to break some functionality. I often consider going back to my smaller "dumb" TV just to get away from the constant headache of wondering how to fix an streaming service that was previously working just fine. I am probably an outlier in the HN community in that I don't generally spend a lot of time customizing my electronics. For the general user like me, default settings in a smart tv can be a bad time.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> So why all the pearl clutching? Because we are going back to feudalism in terms of personal rights and freedoms. In 15 years will own no major possessionns - your electronics, car and appliances can be shut down remotely at any time because you make a tweet elon musk didn't like. And Asset Inflation will ensure noone owns a house. Na dyour door lock will be smart, so if you are behind on rent they will lock you out same day. And people on here will be chanting 'they are a private conoany they can do what they want'

durnygbur 4y ago
Also privacy-preserving practices and behaviors already nowadays flag or shadow ban the user assuming one is a bot or profile them as bad actors. Sometimes more content and services are exposed once the user reveals more personal data (e.g. browsing web through mobile phone vs. through PC with ads blocked). We are aiming into a very evil reality and there doesn't seem to exist anything stopping it.

shaklee3 4y ago

Android TV makes it a smart TV, so that was all for naught

xen2xen1 4y ago

There are stories of TVs just using open wifi, for one. Two, cheap 5g will probably let the TV manufacturers have a cheap way to get ads without wifi and send back screenshots of what you're watching like they do now over wifi. So the workarounds you mention are probably short term.

Eleison23 4y ago
[dead]
nimbius 4y ago
this is surprisingly simple to countermeasure, just pull the SMA antennae leads from the board, and cap the connectors with a few drops of metallic fingernail polish. for surface-mount antennae (which cant be used for 5g or 5ghz wifi) you would just brush the same metallic fingernail polish on the trace :)
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  And this is why I have avoided buying a smart TV for almost ten years now. A TV is a consumer product. I should not have to open it up and modify the fucking hardware just to make it work how I want.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    You didn't buy a smart TV for ten years because of a (frankly unlikely) hypothetical? I've bought smart TVs, not connected them to WiFi, and that was the end of it. You can hear whispers about all kinds of sneaky things like refusing to work, but some of the best TVs out right now are LG smart TVs that will function completely identically to a dumb TV if you don't connect them to the internet.
    - czx4f4bd 4y ago
      No, this is just one of many reasons I haven't yet bought a smart TV. I probably will give in this year, but only because I can finally afford something much larger than what I have today. Here's the thing: At the end of the day, a smart TV has capabilities that I don't need or want, including to change how it functions without warning or consent. However unlikely the possibility is, a smart TV still has the capability to connect to an open network, phone home, and start doing shit I don't want, which means I have to trust it to not do that. On the other hand, my old dumb TV has none of those capabilities, so I can trust it precisely because I don't need to trust it. I know it can't do anything except display what it receives on its inputs. Therefore, any time I've considered replacing my TV with a newer one, I've always weighed predictability against uncertainty and opted in favor of the predictability of what I own. Maybe that's overly paranoid of me, but at the end of the day, I just haven't wanted a new TV as much as I've wanted something I can trust.

xen2xen1 4y ago

Oh, and I forgot about Amazon Sidewalk or things like it mentioned elsewhere.

mrweasel 4y ago

> So why all the pearl clutching? Because the idea that a TV can spy on me is pretty repulsing. To be in compliance with the GDPR I suppose it should be pretty easy to disable, but the fact is that some moron thought that this was ever a good idea to begin with is infuriating. I don't think it's pearl clutching, it's anger, directed at both the manufacturer and the rest of the population that either doesn't know or care that they viewing habits are being tracked. Still I just take the same route as you, my TV is just never going to touch the internet. The angry part in me just want the EU to force TVs to display a small blink light in the corner of the screen anytime viewing data is leaving the TV.

adave 4y ago
Everything is being tracked anyways along with personal identifiable information on the internet, smartphone, security cams, HDMI box etc. Why the hate towards TV's? Is it bad or do people just hate ads? I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card.
- Lio 4y ago
  > I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card. That's a foolish bet you would loose then. Some of us already directly pay extra for privacy. It's not just TVs, it's tracking in general for ad or for anything else. If you want to be tracked then I have no problem with that but I just want to be left alone.
  - adave 4y ago
    Privacy is an illusion at this point if you connect to the internet and do stuff. It's just who has your data and how they are using it. If you want to be left alone then start using usb drives and air gapped laptops. Still you can't stop your personal data like bank details,addresses,SSN etc to not be available since you probably use a public/private banking system. Once people figured out they can become billionaires off of other peoples data and governments got involved for national security the individuals privacy online is all but a myth.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago

I have one of the TVs mentioned in the article, a TCL Roku TV, and I do the same as you: Apple TV only, never hooked the TV up to the internet. Very reliable, cheap, and dumb. I think most people just balk at the price of an external media device when their TV has “it” (but of course not the same quality “it”) built in, and so they end up with a crappy, data-mining, ad-riddled, experience. You get what you pay for.

anonymousab 4y ago

There are tvs that will stop working if they don't get an active connection to update/get new ads/send telemetry after some period of time. There are tvs that will simply connect to any open wifi network that they can. These traits are slowly but surely becoming unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen. Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.

jmole 4y ago
What TVs exactly?
- somat 4y ago
  I run an open wifi acccess point and the neighbors samsung tv is the only thing using it... not sure of the exact model.
BoorishBears 4y ago
> These traits are unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen. That is not true. For TVs is an inverse relationship between quality and how aggressive the "smart" parts are. The open WiFi thing was some low end Samsung, and it's been a long while since I've seen an open WiFi network that doesn't have a captive portal that would block the connection. And I've never seen a TV that would refuse to work without an internet connection, and I can't imagine anything but the most bottom end no-name TV trying to pull that.
toast0 4y ago
> There are tvs that will simply connect to any open wifi network that they can. Don't bring it to the airport or out shopping? Who has an open wifi network in range of their home? (I'm out of touch though, I live in the woods, and can only occasionally see my neighbor's networks, I get to use all the channels for myself, muhahaha) > Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable. Nobody is willing to run an ad program with cached ads. I tried to set one up at my previous job, because it made more sense than live ads, but nope... not going to happen; advertisers want real time control and stats.

nhchris 4y ago

> So why all the pearl clutching? Because it's part of a trend of our possessions turning hostile to us. It's hardware that you pay for and supposedly own, that betrays you, spies on you and acts against your interest, covertly or at least discreetly. That you are for now able to prevent it is besides the point. An implementation detail, that will change as soon as our corporate masters want it to.

gorjusborg 4y ago
This sort of business relies on the normalization of these practices through slow, incremental, change. Unfortunately, it seems to be working. Younger people see being measured, tracked, and advertised to as table stakes for having access to anything. I don't blame the younger folks for this, as much of the motivation for acceptance is the economics involved. They may not be able to afford all the 'requirements' of modern living if they had to pay the 'i am not the product' premium.
yamtaddle 4y ago
I once worked on part of a project for a certain kind of set-top streaming box (no, not one you've likely ever heard of). In discussions with the client they explained that it was impossible to get lower than about double the cost of a comparably-powerful Roku and still turn a profit, without supplementing with income from spyware, advertising, and various "partner programs" on the box. Which makes it damn hard to sell the things unless you've got some other angle to work (so, Apple can pull off $250 streaming boxes, but some new company? They better have a really good pitch, and they're gonna struggle more than they otherwise might to get on store shelves, which is a whole other thing). In our case they did have a niche they were targeting that meant they didn't want or need advertising and such, but the price point still hurt, and they couldn't do better without getting into adware and spyware.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago

I bought a new Samsung TV about a year ago. It has smart stuff that I don't care to use as I have a PC connected and a Chromecast w/ Google TV. I just want it to display HDMI signals generated by one of those devices. On initial power-on, the TV aggressively pushed me to set up internet access and accept a terms & conditions statement. It took some degree of dancing to find a way past the setup wizard without completing these. I am very careful when I select inputs. If I hit the Input button on the remote to switch between devices, I need to make sure I go no further than one step left or right to select the other input. If I go too far, the next selections will tell me that I have still not set up internet and accepted the t&c's and I must do so before I use the feature. This happens regardless of whether I press 'Enter' to actively select them. I've actually had much your opinion for years, but the TV manufacturers really are stepping up their game. My previous Samsung smart TV I was able to use the "just don't configure it" approach and everything was peachy. The landscape is changing.

charcircuit 4y ago
It sounds like you are just making life hard on yourself. You could take a few minutes out of your day to set it up and not have to worry about it.
sjf 4y ago
I specifically bought a Samsung 'digital signage' display instead of a 'TV' because that was the closest I could find to a dumb TV, and I have the same experience. There is an accept terms & conditions popup that requires the internet that takes up the bottom third of the screen which comes up basically when doing anything with that involves the TV remote. Even if you do accept the terms the conditions, it comes back as soon as you are disconnected from the internet. I am extremely disappointed with the experience.

ortusdux 4y ago

Automatic content recognition (ACR) can be performed by the TV directly, so it can be video-source agnostic. https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smart-tv-snooping-features-a4840102036/ https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

jupp0r 4y ago
How will it be tied to your identity?
- brewdad 4y ago
  Did you pay cash for your TV? If not, then the retailer knows the serial # of the TV they sold you and who you are. If they partner with the manufacturer and share the sales data back to them (why wouldn't they? More $$$) then the TV maker has your identity.
  - jupp0r 4y ago
    What do you think is the probability of somebody random sitting in front of a TV right now being the person who bought it? I'd think it's fairly low. At some point of uncertainty, targeted advertising stops making sense and becomes counterproductive.

jtbayly 4y ago

I do volunteer IT work for a private school. One of the TVs quit working. It would turn on, but you couldn't select any of the inputs (eg HDMI). It wouldn't work until I registered it online with a verified email address and went through a long (multi-page) process on their website, where it asked me for all my favorite TV shows, used dark patterns to imply I needed to give them a Credit Card, etc. So, yes, the pearl clutching is for a reason.

gnicholas 4y ago
Yikes, what brand?
- pixl97 4y ago
  Heh, I can't wait until one of these 2-bit TV manufactures goes out of business and the update website gets co-opted by some hackers that write a new firmware update that asks for things like peoples CC to use it.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    Honestly? I wait for this to happen, preferably with a forced redirect to goatse.cx. THAT would improve the things.
  - CyanBird 4y ago
    Given the ass security that these things likely use, you might just be able to use man in the middle attacks against http and it might just work heh

OneLeggedCat 4y ago

> why all the pearl clutching? My vehicle has a cellular internet connection that I cannot easily disable. My insurance company is among the many that would love to get at that data. TV's are valuable enough that such a connection will be coming to them too eventually.

semiquaver 4y ago

Not sure about apple TVs but many set top boxes like rokus are just as bad if not worse in terms of content recognition and telemetry.

ubermonkey 4y ago
AppleTV, by dint of being a product of a hardware company that has made privacy a part of its appeal, doesn't monetize your data. I have no doubt Apple can tell what we watch, but since they're not selling the data or using it to run ads on the device it doesn't bother me.

smusamashah 4y ago

On the other hand I bought a smart TV for youtube and other movie streaming apps. I am in UK and don't even need live TV and pay its licencing fee. Smart TV where I can watch movies, songs, play videos from my phone or computer is the TV i need.

wccrawford 4y ago

My new LG periodically turns itself on to tell me that if I connect it to the internet I can use voice commands. Before that, when it was connected, it would show me advertisements over top of my TV signal occasionally.

xyzzy123 4y ago

Like the flashing 12s time on a microwave, there's often a ui indicator that the tv is "not set up correctly". This severely vexes people with OCD, who want their TV set up "correctly" and maybe to receive updates, but also not to spy on them.

bumby 4y ago

My major gripe is that my smart tv updates its software all the time. When it does, it always seems to break some functionality. I often consider going back to my smaller "dumb" TV just to get away from the constant headache of wondering how to fix an streaming service that was previously working just fine. I am probably an outlier in the HN community in that I don't generally spend a lot of time customizing my electronics. For the general user like me, default settings in a smart tv can be a bad time.