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My advice would be NOT to connect any kind of TV to the Internet. They have microphones and sometimes cameras, and are a huge privacy risk.

bdangubic 1y ago
so does your phone :)
- drnick1 1y ago
  Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.
    - drnick1 1y ago
      Most people don't know that Big Tech is extracting data from them on a massive scale. It's up to us, the "tech people," to educate the people and show them alternatives like Graphene. As for the TV, my advice is not to connect it to the internet. If you need to stream something, hook up a laptop or dedicated device to the TV.
      - hvb2 1y ago
        This is where regulation comes in. For the TV makers. Things should be secure by default and come with fines if they aren't. As for the extracting of data, yes that happens on a massive scale. In free products that no one is forced to use. And I would argue that, by now, almost everyone should know that comes at a price, it's just not monetary to the user. At that point it's a choice people make and should be allowed to make.
        franga2000 1y ago
        The "it spies on you because it's free" thing hasn't been true for many years now. TVs that cost almost a grand still spy on you, as do cars that cost tens of thousands. Youtube/Netflix/Spotify/... still spy on you even if you pay for the premium/whatever tier. If something is free, you're the product. But if it isn't free, you're paying to be the product.
inkyoto 1y ago
If one must forgo the comfort of complete isolation from the vulgarities of contemporary media and visual indulgence – an unwise choice, yet one that many appear compelled to make – then prudence demands mitigation rather than surrender. A measured compromise would entail the meticulous profiling of the TV’s network traffic, followed by the imposition of complete blocking at the DNS level (via Pi-hole, NextDNS and alike) first, whilst blacklisting the outgoing CIDR's on the router itself at the same time. This course of action shall not eliminate the privacy invasion risk in its entirety – for a mere firmware update may well redirect the TV traffic to novel hosts – yet it shall transform a reckless exposure into a calculated and therefore manageable risk.
- ipython 1y ago
  I don't connect my TVs to the Internet; instead I hook up Apple TVs to an HDMI port and just use the TV as God intended - as a dumb display device. The Apple TV is connected to the Internet and functions as my portal to, as you say, the vulgarities of contemporary media and visual indulgence. Without the downsides of buggy and spyware ridden TV firmware.
  - drnick1 1y ago
    The Apple TV box is better than a TV from a privacy standpoint (no microphone or camera), but it still does not give the user enough freedom. The App Store is the only way to install software, and it is tightly controlled by Apple. This means things such as ad-free frontends from Youtube are regularly purged, and Apple won't even allow you to install a browser.

bdangubic 1y ago

so does your phone :)

drnick1 1y ago
Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.
  - drnick1 1y ago
    Most people don't know that Big Tech is extracting data from them on a massive scale. It's up to us, the "tech people," to educate the people and show them alternatives like Graphene. As for the TV, my advice is not to connect it to the internet. If you need to stream something, hook up a laptop or dedicated device to the TV.
    - hvb2 1y ago
      This is where regulation comes in. For the TV makers. Things should be secure by default and come with fines if they aren't. As for the extracting of data, yes that happens on a massive scale. In free products that no one is forced to use. And I would argue that, by now, almost everyone should know that comes at a price, it's just not monetary to the user. At that point it's a choice people make and should be allowed to make.
      - franga2000 1y ago
        The "it spies on you because it's free" thing hasn't been true for many years now. TVs that cost almost a grand still spy on you, as do cars that cost tens of thousands. Youtube/Netflix/Spotify/... still spy on you even if you pay for the premium/whatever tier. If something is free, you're the product. But if it isn't free, you're paying to be the product.

inkyoto 1y ago

If one must forgo the comfort of complete isolation from the vulgarities of contemporary media and visual indulgence – an unwise choice, yet one that many appear compelled to make – then prudence demands mitigation rather than surrender. A measured compromise would entail the meticulous profiling of the TV’s network traffic, followed by the imposition of complete blocking at the DNS level (via Pi-hole, NextDNS and alike) first, whilst blacklisting the outgoing CIDR's on the router itself at the same time. This course of action shall not eliminate the privacy invasion risk in its entirety – for a mere firmware update may well redirect the TV traffic to novel hosts – yet it shall transform a reckless exposure into a calculated and therefore manageable risk.

ipython 1y ago
I don't connect my TVs to the Internet; instead I hook up Apple TVs to an HDMI port and just use the TV as God intended - as a dumb display device. The Apple TV is connected to the Internet and functions as my portal to, as you say, the vulgarities of contemporary media and visual indulgence. Without the downsides of buggy and spyware ridden TV firmware.
- drnick1 1y ago
  The Apple TV box is better than a TV from a privacy standpoint (no microphone or camera), but it still does not give the user enough freedom. The App Store is the only way to install software, and it is tightly controlled by Apple. This means things such as ad-free frontends from Youtube are regularly purged, and Apple won't even allow you to install a browser.