6 ms·

I never connect any “smart” device to wifi. If it doesn’t work without connectivity, I don’t want it. I use my TVs as display devices. They have HDMI-in and tha

I never connect any “smart” device to wifi. If it doesn’t work without connectivity, I don’t want it. I use my TVs as display devices. They have HDMI-in and that’s it.

lelandfe 4mo ago
On my TCL TV, you have to connect it to read the Google policies you are agreeing to. If you don't, you agree to policies unread. Thankfully, the blast radius of this is nothing without connectivity.
- idiotsecant 4mo ago
  But it lets you continue without reading them? There's a lot of questionable terms of service rules but this one has to be unenforcable.
  - lelandfe 4mo ago
    You must check a checkbox in agreement to continue. To read the policies one agrees to, an internet connection is required. You may check the checkbox without reading. As far as I have found from a lot of menu spelunking, this agreement is irrevocable. If I ever go online, it will be used.
    - trumpdong 4mo ago
      That's the kind of thing that doesn't always hold up in court.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - rationalist 4mo ago
        The reality is, no one is going to take the companies to court over things like this.
        wiml 4mo ago
        Disney eventually walked it back due to bad PR, but this did happen: https://wdwnt.com/2024/08/disney-dismissal-wrongful-death-lawsuit/ https://wdwnt.com/2024/08/disney-dismissal-wrongful-death-la...
        rationalist 4mo ago
        That has very little in common with 99.999+% of people who don't experience a tragedy like that and just have their data used against them.
- drhike 4mo ago
  If it has an Ethernet port I would use that then unplug it. It still gets to phone home once but you don't have to worry about it maliciously saving your Wi-Fi password for later
  - tamimio 4mo ago
    You can create a guest wifi with temporary password, I do that when I need to connect devices that might store the password like kindle or such.
- secretsatan 4mo ago
  [dead]
- elzbardico 4mo ago
  If I don't connect to the internet ever, my agreement to Google policies is probably a moot point.
  - rationalist 4mo ago
    If you don't connect, sure. If a visitor connects the TV, all bets are off.
    - lelandfe 4mo ago
      I have had to tell people not to connect the TV. It yearns for release.
- asdff 4mo ago
  Sounds like a great reason to return a TV. It isn't like you must have a TCL TV.
graypegg 4mo ago
I have a smart TV that's never spoken to the internet after exiting the factory, but it's a pretty tenuous state of affairs. I have this fear that someone staying over is going to see the "Services unavailable, press [menu] to troubleshoot" toast that shows up overtop the HDMI feed for a few seconds and think they're helping me by connecting it. 4-5 years worth of firmware updates all at once... half a decade of watch data somehow extracated from the HDMI feed and stored for precisely this moment... ads everywhere. Even if it doesn't happen instantly, I can only assume there's some flag deep in the OS called makeEverythingWorse just waiting to be flipped on the femtosecond The Beast catches a whiff of a slightly-higher patch number; now content in it's doomed state after having fufilled it's one true purpose of telling someone at samsung my favourite show is HDMI2. I have had to back my mother down from that precipice on her own TV so I know it's worth worrying about. The siren call of an entirely empty TV homescreen beckoning us with a struck-out radio tower icon. "We have Disney+ and CraveTV too... press [menu]... pay no attention to the sticky note your son put on the coffee table"
- dylan604 4mo ago
  > I have this fear that someone staying over is going to This happened to me. After they left, I tried a factory reset, but I don't have confidence there's not some code to remember previously saved wifi connections because my tinfoil hat is firmly in place. However, as you've said I only use the TV as an HDMI receiver. None of the TV's apps are used again. So I'm not sure how much they can detect from just the use of the HDMI port as the only thing being used. The games we play to get the subsidized pricing.
  - Eisenstein 4mo ago
    HDMI is heavily used for ACR (automatic content recognition) in smart TVs: "Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI" "For both LG (a) and Samsung (b)TVs, the scenarios with the highest ACR traffic are Linear and HDMI." * https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3646547.3689013 https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3646547.3689013
    - 4mo ago
jon-wood 4mo ago
Frustratingly I do want some of the functionality that comes with connecting my TV to the network - specifically the ability to control things like turning it on and choosing which input its set to via an API it exposes. That's manageable by putting it on a VLAN which isn't allowed access to the outside world, but its also really annoying to me that I have to do that.
- asdff 4mo ago
  You don't need an api for that. You can do that with a 30 year old CRT if you wanted. Copy IR signals from remote. Put IR blaster in front of IR receiver. Make whatever tool you want to control the IR blaster. Done.
  - jon-wood 4mo ago
    Yes. I could do that. I could also hook something up to the debug serial port and reverse engineer that, or use HDMI-CEC, or make a tiny robot that pushes the buttons on the back of the TV. I'm using the API though, because I already have a Home Assistant server on my network and that can communicate with the API without me having to faff about making tiny robots.
Innittech 4mo ago
[flagged]
- everdrive 4mo ago
  You taunt but you've described the ideal state.
goobatrooba 4mo ago
I get this policy in theory but don't see how it works in practice in a modern life where you want some device that runs Netflix, YouTube, of similar to show on your TV. It can be the TV or an android box - but somewhere you end up trusting a third party and a software that may end up running other this party apps. The alternative is a local jellyfin server but that means you very likely have to break some laws to put content that the family wants to see on it. Personally I'd just not want any TV in my house, but convincing the family of that is not easy ;-)
- cobbzilla 4mo ago
  I drive my TVs with a locked-down mac mini.
andrepd 4mo ago
It's annoying because I would definitely like for some internet-enabled functionality, such as youtube. I would also like to connect it to the LAN and not to the internet for other things, such as streaming from my NAS...

I never connect any “smart” device to wifi. If it doesn’t work without connectivity, I don’t want it. I use my TVs as display devices. They have HDMI-in and that’s it.

lelandfe 4mo ago

On my TCL TV, you have to connect it to read the Google policies you are agreeing to. If you don't, you agree to policies unread. Thankfully, the blast radius of this is nothing without connectivity.

idiotsecant 4mo ago
But it lets you continue without reading them? There's a lot of questionable terms of service rules but this one has to be unenforcable.
- lelandfe 4mo ago
  You must check a checkbox in agreement to continue. To read the policies one agrees to, an internet connection is required. You may check the checkbox without reading. As far as I have found from a lot of menu spelunking, this agreement is irrevocable. If I ever go online, it will be used.
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    That's the kind of thing that doesn't always hold up in court.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - rationalist 4mo ago
      The reality is, no one is going to take the companies to court over things like this.
      - wiml 4mo ago
        Disney eventually walked it back due to bad PR, but this did happen: https://wdwnt.com/2024/08/disney-dismissal-wrongful-death-lawsuit/ https://wdwnt.com/2024/08/disney-dismissal-wrongful-death-la...
        rationalist 4mo ago
        That has very little in common with 99.999+% of people who don't experience a tragedy like that and just have their data used against them.
drhike 4mo ago
If it has an Ethernet port I would use that then unplug it. It still gets to phone home once but you don't have to worry about it maliciously saving your Wi-Fi password for later
- tamimio 4mo ago
  You can create a guest wifi with temporary password, I do that when I need to connect devices that might store the password like kindle or such.
secretsatan 4mo ago
[dead]
elzbardico 4mo ago
If I don't connect to the internet ever, my agreement to Google policies is probably a moot point.
- rationalist 4mo ago
  If you don't connect, sure. If a visitor connects the TV, all bets are off.
  - lelandfe 4mo ago
    I have had to tell people not to connect the TV. It yearns for release.
asdff 4mo ago
Sounds like a great reason to return a TV. It isn't like you must have a TCL TV.

graypegg 4mo ago

I have a smart TV that's never spoken to the internet after exiting the factory, but it's a pretty tenuous state of affairs. I have this fear that someone staying over is going to see the "Services unavailable, press [menu] to troubleshoot" toast that shows up overtop the HDMI feed for a few seconds and think they're helping me by connecting it. 4-5 years worth of firmware updates all at once... half a decade of watch data somehow extracated from the HDMI feed and stored for precisely this moment... ads everywhere. Even if it doesn't happen instantly, I can only assume there's some flag deep in the OS called makeEverythingWorse just waiting to be flipped on the femtosecond The Beast catches a whiff of a slightly-higher patch number; now content in it's doomed state after having fufilled it's one true purpose of telling someone at samsung my favourite show is HDMI2. I have had to back my mother down from that precipice on her own TV so I know it's worth worrying about. The siren call of an entirely empty TV homescreen beckoning us with a struck-out radio tower icon. "We have Disney+ and CraveTV too... press [menu]... pay no attention to the sticky note your son put on the coffee table"

dylan604 4mo ago
> I have this fear that someone staying over is going to This happened to me. After they left, I tried a factory reset, but I don't have confidence there's not some code to remember previously saved wifi connections because my tinfoil hat is firmly in place. However, as you've said I only use the TV as an HDMI receiver. None of the TV's apps are used again. So I'm not sure how much they can detect from just the use of the HDMI port as the only thing being used. The games we play to get the subsidized pricing.
- Eisenstein 4mo ago
  HDMI is heavily used for ACR (automatic content recognition) in smart TVs: "Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI" "For both LG (a) and Samsung (b)TVs, the scenarios with the highest ACR traffic are Linear and HDMI." * https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3646547.3689013 https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3646547.3689013
  - 4mo ago

jon-wood 4mo ago

Frustratingly I do want some of the functionality that comes with connecting my TV to the network - specifically the ability to control things like turning it on and choosing which input its set to via an API it exposes. That's manageable by putting it on a VLAN which isn't allowed access to the outside world, but its also really annoying to me that I have to do that.

asdff 4mo ago
You don't need an api for that. You can do that with a 30 year old CRT if you wanted. Copy IR signals from remote. Put IR blaster in front of IR receiver. Make whatever tool you want to control the IR blaster. Done.
- jon-wood 4mo ago
  Yes. I could do that. I could also hook something up to the debug serial port and reverse engineer that, or use HDMI-CEC, or make a tiny robot that pushes the buttons on the back of the TV. I'm using the API though, because I already have a Home Assistant server on my network and that can communicate with the API without me having to faff about making tiny robots.

Innittech 4mo ago

[flagged]

everdrive 4mo ago
You taunt but you've described the ideal state.

goobatrooba 4mo ago

I get this policy in theory but don't see how it works in practice in a modern life where you want some device that runs Netflix, YouTube, of similar to show on your TV. It can be the TV or an android box - but somewhere you end up trusting a third party and a software that may end up running other this party apps. The alternative is a local jellyfin server but that means you very likely have to break some laws to put content that the family wants to see on it. Personally I'd just not want any TV in my house, but convincing the family of that is not easy ;-)

cobbzilla 4mo ago
I drive my TVs with a locked-down mac mini.

andrepd 4mo ago

It's annoying because I would definitely like for some internet-enabled functionality, such as youtube. I would also like to connect it to the LAN and not to the internet for other things, such as streaming from my NAS...