I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
Is American football not merely a vehicle through which advertising can be pumped? You’d think the entire sport had been designed from the ground up for such a purpose.
Four seconds of action, six minutes of commercials….3.6 seconds of action, 47 replays, five minutes of commercials.
P.S. Smart TVs can eat shit and die.
I went to a game for the first time a few years ago. I recall the moment where everyone was sitting around and not doing anything because they were waiting for the commercials to finish. It felt like watching actors drop their characters the moment they step out of the spotlight.
This (and the ridiculous, eye gouging price) is why I’d never go to a UFC event. It’s bad enough when I’m home and I have to go clean the kitchen or fold my laundry for 30 minutes if a fight finishes even slightly early, but having to stand around waiting for ads to finish on a PPV card would turn me into Ted Kaczynski
I made my Smart TV into a dumb TV by never activating the smart TV functions. And then I plugged a relatively cheap computer into it. So I don’t have this kind of problem.
Your grandma does.
I installed her TV and internet last week. She barely understands the concept of switching TV inputs, and her Roku smart TV doesn’t let you rename inputs from HDMI1 to [ISP NAME] unless the thing is connected to the internet. It also defaults out of the box to show the smart TV bullshit every single time you turn it on, instead of just showing the last used input before the TV turned off. So she’s completely baffled how to watch simple television channels unless I spend 10 minutes reconfiguring this garbage so it’s usable.
Go visit your grandma, everyone. And reconfigure her smart TV. I’m joking but I’m not. I can only visit so many grandmas per day.
I haven’t had a living grandmother in… I don’t even know how many years at this point.
But the fact of the matter is, the older generations don’t really use Smart TVs, they’re still using Comcast boxes and accessing regular TV. Some of the more tech savvy will engage Netflix or Disney+ but beyond that, it’s doubtful they even know anything beyond those exist.
I’ll reiterate that I’m in a half dozen living rooms every day, and most of them are senior citizens. I’ve been doing this for years. They all have smart TVs, whether they use the features or not.
I’ll also reiterate that they flat out will not even use a TV sometimes because they’re defeated by the smart TV features that prevent them from getting over to their Comcast box. Did you even read my comment?
They get suckered by the cheap TV in middle of the aisle at Walmart or Costco and buy three. You can’t even go out and buy a TV that isn’t a smart TV without specifically looking for it. They don’t even know to begin to look for these things.
Do you think they’re still on an old CRT with a VCR hooked up via RCA? They had to go down some weird upgrade rabbit hole that they still don’t fully understand because they ended up with a DVD of some classic movie, went and got a DVD player only to find out they didn’t have HDMI ports so now they had to go buy some garbage TV thats subsidized by advertising companies. Again, I’ve seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times.
The fact of the matter is that your fix reeks of ‘I got mine’ energy, and it doesn’t fix anything. Large swaths of people will still get these ads in their faces and these companies won’t stop. Quite the opposite, they’ll keep looking for more ways to fuck their customers.
I’ll also reiterate that they flat out will not even use a TV sometimes because they’re defeated by the smart TV features that prevent them from getting over to their Comcast box.
Yes I did read your comment and here you just proved my point. And my solution was not for old people. Point I was making in my comment was that old people are already lost cause. They don’t understand technology and therefore will not benefit from it. So yeah they get suckered into buying these TVs and then they never use them properly or they get somebody younger to set them up so that they can use either Netflix or Disney+ since those are the only things they know of to watch whatever programs they can pull up or they pay someone to get a cable box plugged in and surf like they did in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s.
My “fix” is for younger people, twenties to '50s, who don’t want to deal with the ad-pocalypse. I have been able to set it up multiple times with various sized computers right down to a Raspberry Pi. And yeah, of some ain’t tech savvy enough to plug a computer into an HDMI port and use it to watch stuff on their TV, I have no sympathies. We live in a digital age and if you’re younger than '50 years old and can’t work a computer, you’re dead out of luck when it comes to digital entertainment and you might as well get used to having ads shoved in your face the rest of your life.
I have a very old 4K Toshiba TV with a built in “smart browser” that, due to me never plugging into the Internet, has a home page with news about how well Obama’s doing in the polls for being a relatively unknown junior senator.
Which only works for now. They’ve already gotten you to be ok with the upcharge price for the “smart” hardware. Soon they’re going to require online activation for “reasons”. So choosing to not connect it won’t work. And they’ll do regular ad connection checks and if it fails to update ads after so much time the TV will prompt an error to please correct the network.
Hate it all you want, it’s going to happen.
It doesn’t need to happen if we actually do something about this hate.
Like what?
organize.
is a matter of pushing advertisement and privacy restrictions
Yeah all that bluster in Congress about TikTok collecting people’s data and yet not one single privacy bill materialized anywhere. Not even from Democrats. It’s almost like the privacy concerns were not even real.
That is the way
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it’s just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it’s back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don’t sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.
Plenty of 4k with HDR on Real Debrid. Or even better quality and bitrate ripped from BRs, in the open waters.
HDMI 2.1 can support 4k. Find a ship that doesn’t sink. Voila. No ads. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No HDR? Better than a single second of an ad.
Buy a smart TV box like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. You can get full quality streaming with some ads but not nearly as bad as the software that’s built into some of these TVs.
I know, I was just letting people know that this guys solution comes with downsides.
It’ll be 4k if you install the windows app for the service or watch in Edge.
What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?
Don’t buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the “tech world” for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway…
Razor blade to specific pcb traces?
Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.
I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.
That’s unlikely, the additional R&D cost probably won’t weigh up to the costs incurred by the small minority that removes it.
hah, there’s nowhere near enough infrastructure to handle that.
Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.
And then buy a non-smart TV instead. At least one company, Sceptre, still makes them. (I don’t want to make it seem like I’m shilling for a particular brand, but I genuinely don’t know of any other options, aside from commercial signage displays.)
Commercial displays might be the answer, all the smart bullshit goes against their use case so they need a way to go around it in case they still have it, and every brand have them.
Last time I looked into it they were more expensive and had to be bought through an agent but that was a few years ago, thing might have changed.
Again, the brand I mentioned in the previous comment is a consumer-oriented one, that you can simply buy off Amazon etc., that still sells dumb TVs. I’d only suggest resorting to commercial displays if you’re boycotting that brand for some reason.
They don’t seem to be available in Europe.
Ah, that’s unfortunate, and another good reason to consider resorting to a commercial display.
'Course, it’s also possible that a commercial display is so much more expensive/a hassle that it might be worth figuring out how to buy a Sceptre TV in a country where it is sold and then importing it yourself.
The funny thing is that I can find all sort of accessories for those TVs on Amazon but not the TVs.
…Oh no. I just checked, and some of the TVs that did have Amazon listings as recently as a month or so ago (which I think was around the last time I mentioned this sort of thing) are no longer available, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U550CV-U-Ultra-2160p-60Hz/dp/B01CDC49E0
There are still a couple of “Komodo by Sceptre” TVs left, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Komodo-Sceptre-KU515R-Ultra-3840x2160/dp/B07W68VFGL , but that’s it. I hope they aren’t in the process of exiting the market entirely, but I’m worried! 😟
Sounds like they might have the capability to just network block the device from their router too. At least that’s what I do, just in case someone tries to use it.
It will be a dark day indeed when I allow my TV to connect to the internet. These things are glorified monitors.
You’re right, we should start putting ads on all monitors
Somewhere, an ad exec just stiff.
Why the fuck does your television have a home page?
Never give the TV the wifi password.
Why the fuck does your television have a home page?
FLauncher is pretty great :)
I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.
Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.
You have to reject smart TVs at the time of purchase, or manufacturers think this shit is okay and will keep escalating until even an Nvidia Shield won’t save you.
Unfortunately options are becoming increasingly limited. My guess is that they’re making more money cramming in ads for people that tolerate it than they are losing money from people who refuse it.
It’s come full circle.
Back in the early 00s, I invited my buddy over to watch the super bowl commercials. Neither one of us gave a damn whatsoever about football, put the commercials were always lit.
Tangentally related, FUTO put a bad taste in my mouth when they were harassing the graphene os team https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113443396794247106
Where can I pirate the ads instead of paying for your TV service?
That is absolute cancer.
Get a cheap computer and connect the tv to it; get a mouse and bluetooth keyboard or an air mouse if your want to; install kodi perhaps, or just have your bare desktop. Problem solved
Disconnect the tv to wifi too.
There are some cheap Bluetooth TV remotes so if you want to take some time out of your day, there’s a few Linux distros that ship with similar GUI to some TV’s.
cant one simple adb debloat any droid device? i mean adb list those packages, maybe even backup some and then remove the obvious ones?!
Not if they’re baked into the system. Although that may get into GPL violations, I forget. God knows a device can come with locked firmware though.
i dont know what you mean by baked in really. all services are packages i guess and a quick google search says stuff like that at least exist at some point, e.g.https://github.com/tutyamxx/androidtv-debloat-script
i wish op the best of luck to escape telemetry hell.
Adb is just an interface between computer and phone, the packages it lists may not be every system component, you can add anything in at kernel level, or also just not list it in that interface.
no. smart tvs are not phones.
Between computer and device running Android.
I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don’t get any ads anywhere anymore.
Which one?
I use Projectivy at the moment. Pretty close to stock visually, just without the ads or apps you can’t hide. Enough for me to make it tolerable.
Thanks.
People who don’t have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you’d see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are “dumb” displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren’t expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.
They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn’t have ads. Also, fuck ads.
