2 ms·
Why would you ever connect a TV to the internet in the first place?
by ed_mercer 2mo ago
Why would you ever connect a TV to the internet in the first place?
- fhub 2mo ago1. Onboarding tells you to 2. Convenience 3. Cheaper than buying an Apple TV et al
- readthenotes1 2mo agoBecause not everyone wants to buy a tv and a Roku or similar device.
- sgarland 2mo agoMost non-techie people I know have a smart TV without an external streaming box like an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Roku, etc.
- buckle8017 2mo agoThe average person's house has a gateway/router/wifi thing from their ISP, a smart tv connected to the internet with microphones, and one of those iptv piracy boxes that's actually the source of all the residential proxy ips. Convenience over all else is what 99% of people are doing.
- mitxela 2mo agoResidential proxying seems a good trade for piracy to me. However, there's a chance it will attract attention of some authority, who (although proxying itself is legal) will see your piracy box and arrest you for piracy. However, this doesn't seem to happen in practice, perhaps because residential proxying is so common.
- voxelghost 2mo agoBecause it is a 'smart Tv', and it asks to get connected to the internet during setup? That being said, I have an old LG Tv (pre-android, forget what they call the os), and I never connected it, opting instead to hook up a firetv stick .... (who knows what bad crap they might be up to btw). But the point is, we are a minority, most people go the path of least resistance.
- jeffbee 2mo agoDid you mean pre-webOS? As far as I know LG TVs have never run Android.
- voxelghost 2mo agoYeah you are right, dont know where I got the idea that they had switched to Android after I bought mine in the 2020s
- throwaway613746 2mo ago[dead]
- solid_fuel 2mo agoHow do you know that not connecting it is sufficient to stop the spying? There are a few large IoT-focused networks like Amazon Sidewalk where conceivably the smart TV could connect to them if you don't connect it to your home wifi. I believe many ISPs like Xfinity also runs shared public wifi from their routers - a tv could connect via your neighbor's ISP-provided router and you wouldn't have any idea.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 2mo agoA pretty silly thing to ask. I can control my LG OLED TV from the YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my phone, as well as other apps, but the way that works is the apps hand off the stream parameters to the TV, they don't actually proxy the stream to the TV, which would have all kinds of drawbacks. The TV also comes out of the box or within 1 click of having the apps of popular services like Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, HBO/Max, Peacock, etc etc all of them they're just lightweight javascript applications.
- goshx 2mo agoEver heard of netflix, youtube, disney+, paramount, hulu, etc?
- QuarterReptile 2mo agoIn my experience (I have a 2015 TV that's been EOL'ed by anyone doing apps for TVs) streaming services are increasingly not allowing chromecast, instead requiring you to log in on the TV. I cancel those services... but I recognize that many people go the other way.
- N19PEDL2 2mo agoBecause Firefox never released its Matchstick.