This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Since telling them that Bork's video rentals could be made public got them the pass the VPPA, maybe telling them their TVs know all the freaky porn they watch will get them to pass a comprehensive digital privacy bill.
Though I'd have to use photosynthesis if I wanted to hold my breath.
this article is a load of bollocks;
i really love my smart idiot box!
but wait, this may sound bad,
we interrupt this limerick for an ad --
have you thought of switching to our socks?
There once was a man who went mad
When YouTube kept forcing an ad
They kept crossing his border,
So he bought this camcorder
Now he's looping his own tape of a cat.
This is beautiful.
What do I do? I don't live in the US, by the way.
Don’t forget that if you connect external devices to them, they’re also taking snapshots of the content “so they can serve targeted ads”.
I dumbedcmy smart tv by disconnected it from the internet. The stupid thing is the tv was requesting internet connection to work, so I had to put it on my network and then block everything so the tv pouted and then shut up.
Now I switch to a Fire tv usb stick on it but god I hate it..
the tv was requesting internet connection to work
What tv is that? Just so I know what to avoid
So which brand is the better of em? I just received my pi so I’ll set up a pi hole but I need a tv. I looked at conference room monitors and they’re too expensive, even on eBay. I could just not connect it to the net, yes, but I can tell ya right now that the other people in the house will definitely connect it to the net and not have patience for using the pc, etc
I'd recommend getting a Hisense Android (or Google) TV since they let you set it up without creating an account, then use "adb uninstall --user 0 ..." to completely debloat it (including removing Google apps). Then you can use your router to block internet access to the TV's MAC address, along with setting the TV's DNS server to 0.0.0.0, which will redirect all DNS traffic to a black hole, effectively blocking internet access.
Also replace the launcher with LeanbackOnFire and the keyboard with LeanKey Keyboard while you're at it. Note that replacing the launcher will block the Input button on the remote from working, but LeanbackOnFire will allow you to access the inputs from the homescreen. You can also use Button Mapper to remap whichever remote button you want to whichever HDMI input you want using an Android broadcast signal, but that's a bit more advanced and requires reading adb logcat logs to figure out how to switch inputs using the proper command.
If you're feeling super adventurous, you can dump the boot.img using UART in the Uboot bootloader and root the device after unlocking the bootloader. Note that you will need to enable UART in the service menu before unlocking the bootloader since unlocking the bootloader will make integrity checks fail (including certain DRM), which will also make the service menu inaccessible.
Additional note: disabling Google apps will make the stock launcher stop working, so you will need to install a replacement launcher before debloating.
So which brand is the better of em?
I haven't found one that isn't shit, sadly.
That said, I installed Android TV on a Raspberry Pi 4, connected that to a TV via HDMI, and have all the features (and way more) of a Smart TV or Roku, without the OS level ads or spying.
