Author Topic: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??  (Read 7064 times)

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Offline vad

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #25 on: July 11, 2021, 09:38:50 am »
I never had ad problems with paid streaming services, such as YouTube Premium, Netflix or Amazon.

As for the exact location of the media player, for the sake of this discussion it does not really matter if the media player is integrated into a smart TV or a Blu Ray player, or is a standalone device ranging from Apple TV to no-name stick from Chinese vendor. If you want to watch streaming content - you have to connect the media player to the Internet.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #26 on: July 11, 2021, 11:49:41 am »
Quote
The propensity for it to turn into an ad delivery mechanism

https://www.samsung.com/uk/business/samsungads/

Quote
Samsung Ads proprietary first-party data, powered by industry leading Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology that allows advertisers to reach households in more impactful and relevant ways.

Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data is a highly effective, PII compliant way, to get direct insights of viewership behaviour on Smart TVs. ACR recognizes content viewership, across linear TV, OTT, and gaming environments.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #27 on: July 11, 2021, 07:44:06 pm »
I never had ad problems with paid streaming services, such as YouTube Premium, Netflix or Amazon.

As for the exact location of the media player, for the sake of this discussion it does not really matter if the media player is integrated into a smart TV or a Blu Ray player, or is a standalone device ranging from Apple TV to no-name stick from Chinese vendor. If you want to watch streaming content - you have to connect the media player to the Internet.

It actually does matter where the streaming device is, but not because of the physical location. It's very hard to find a non-"smart" TV anymore and this is because the TV prices are all subsidized by the built in streaming abilities which are in a sense a trojan horse, offering you useful functionality but the primary function is to spy on your habits and gather advertising data. A standalone streaming device doesn't have to subsidize the cost of a TV, cannot tell what you are watching when it does not come from the streaming device, and you have the option of many different open solutions that do not gather data and do not spy on your habits and do not do things like display advertisements in the menus of the TV. I refuse to support that whole business model, I will not tolerate any kind of advertising in my TV, and it's the stupidest thing ever to integrate something like a streaming device with a life cycle of 2-5 years before it is useless into a TV that should have a life cycle of 10-20 years. I've dealt with older smart TVs and they become a pain even if you aren't using the smart feature, it's so tightly integrated that you end up having things like the TV crashing and rebooting while you're just trying to use it as a monitor.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 07:45:46 pm by james_s »
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #28 on: July 12, 2021, 03:38:58 am »
I hate this trend so much myself.   It will get to a point where you need to mod your own devices when you first buy them just to get rid of all this crap.

TVs are already plagued by this now, you cannot buy a non smart TV anymore.  At least not easily.  You can buy commercial displays like in fast food places but those are very expensive like 5-10 grand.  Soon it will be fridges, then probably washer/dryers.   Their goal is to have at least one spy device in every room of the house. 
 
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #29 on: July 12, 2021, 04:25:55 am »
TVs are already plagued by this now, you cannot buy a non smart TV anymore.  At least not easily.
You'll have an easier time if you look for monitors. Which is more or less what a "non smart" TV is - a smart TV minus the built in player.
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Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #30 on: July 12, 2021, 04:32:52 am »
TVs are already plagued by this now, you cannot buy a non smart TV anymore.  At least not easily.
You'll have an easier time if you look for monitors. Which is more or less what a "non smart" TV is - a smart TV minus the built in player.

They omit the DHCP rubbish on monitors, don't they? Set top boxes refuse playback don't they?
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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #31 on: July 12, 2021, 06:47:21 am »
TVs are already plagued by this now, you cannot buy a non smart TV anymore.  At least not easily.
You'll have an easier time if you look for monitors. Which is more or less what a "non smart" TV is - a smart TV minus the built in player.

TV sized monitors are going to require a second mortgage though.  That's basically getting into commercial grade stuff like fast food displays and will cost the same as a small car. You also won't easily be able to find this at any store.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #32 on: July 12, 2021, 01:15:26 pm »
TV sized monitors are going to require a second mortgage though.  That's basically getting into commercial grade stuff like fast food displays and will cost the same as a small car. You also won't easily be able to find this at any store.
Depending on what you consider to be "TV sized", a quick Newegg search finds a 43" IPS 4K for about $500.
https://www.newegg.com/acer-um-md1aa-001-43-uhd/p/0JC-000P-00CK2?quicklink=true

I think a more reasonable solution would be for a community like XDA to get more involved in hacking smart TVs. I don't think we'll be complaining about the smart stuff if we could reprogram it to do what we want.
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Offline PlainName

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #33 on: July 12, 2021, 01:38:05 pm »
I have an older Samsung smart TV and my solution is to never have it connected to the network. Programs are delivered via MythTV or Amazon dongle or whatever. However, my rationale for going that way was primarily because TVs get old and their apps no longer work well, if at all, with providers as requirements change. Seemed to me best to cut to the chase and implement things how I wanted rather than put up with their idea of what they wanted me to like, which would bite the dust at some point anyway.

Actually, similar reason for not using built-in DHCP or DNS on a router.
 

Offline aandrew

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #34 on: July 12, 2021, 01:59:16 pm »
Nothing wrong with *some* smart TVs; my Roku TV is quite nice in that it doesn't have any of that ad shit and the experience is pretty decent. You do have to be careful though, like others have said it is becoming a cesspool.
 

Offline vad

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #35 on: July 12, 2021, 02:32:25 pm »
TV sized monitors are going to require a second mortgage though.  That's basically getting into commercial grade stuff like fast food displays and will cost the same as a small car. You also won't easily be able to find this at any store.
Depending on what you consider to be "TV sized", a quick Newegg search finds a 43" IPS 4K for about $500.
https://www.newegg.com/acer-um-md1aa-001-43-uhd/p/0JC-000P-00CK2?quicklink=true

I think a more reasonable solution would be for a community like XDA to get more involved in hacking smart TVs. I don't think we'll be complaining about the smart stuff if we could reprogram it to do what we want.
65” was the most popular size overs the past few years. These days 75” to 85” seems to be a sweet spot.
 
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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #36 on: July 12, 2021, 08:27:14 pm »
TV sized monitors are going to require a second mortgage though.  That's basically getting into commercial grade stuff like fast food displays and will cost the same as a small car. You also won't easily be able to find this at any store.
Depending on what you consider to be "TV sized", a quick Newegg search finds a 43" IPS 4K for about $500.
https://www.newegg.com/acer-um-md1aa-001-43-uhd/p/0JC-000P-00CK2?quicklink=true

I think a more reasonable solution would be for a community like XDA to get more involved in hacking smart TVs. I don't think we'll be complaining about the smart stuff if we could reprogram it to do what we want.

Yeah hacking existing TVs is probably the best bet.  They are practically giving away 55"+ 4k TVs now, it's hard to justify paying like 10x for an equivalent monitor.   But someone that knows what they're doing could probably bypass most of the electronics and just drive the LCD directly.  Or at least drop a custom firmware on the existing electronics that removes all the smart stuff and just turns it into a traditional TV.

Have not bought a TV in at least 10 years but I assume they're doing the BS now where you need to setup and account and all that crap and tie it to an app before you can even use it?  That's the stuff I'd want to be able to bypass if I bought a TV.   I just want to be able to use it without relying on a phone or having it call home. 

Another option is also a projector, at least until the smart plague hits those too. 
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #37 on: July 12, 2021, 08:39:29 pm »
Nothing wrong with *some* smart TVs; my Roku TV is quite nice in that it doesn't have any of that ad shit and the experience is pretty decent. You do have to be careful though, like others have said it is becoming a cesspool.

Have they changed? I dumped the Roku box I had a few years ago because it had a banner ad in the menu I couldn't disable. I have a zero tolerance policy regarding ads.
 
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Offline RJSV

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #38 on: July 13, 2021, 10:32:34 am »
Dealing with smart TV / WIFI during a stint house-sitting, nice house in Sierra-Nevadas. EVERY classic channel playing older TV shows, such as 'How it's made', were subscription required.
   Shows like 'Beverley Hillbillies' : Subscription required. Got so bad I simply stopped browsing the menu.
   Oh, AND the TV voice responder "SIRI put on CNN" somehow 'taught my nearby google phone to want
to activate that dumb-ass voice command sh!t.
Phone now interrupts me, asking what did I want.
(stopped my video play, to ask me to repeat command)
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #39 on: July 13, 2021, 04:21:31 pm »
Wow sounds like a pain.   I sure hope my current TV lasts a long time.   Going to assume the newer ones won't let you even use them if you don't plug into a network?
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #40 on: July 13, 2021, 05:21:20 pm »
My current Samsung TV is pretty good and is still not very "smart". If/when I'll change it, I will definitely consider buying a monitor with no software except image settings. Yes they are more expensive than TV sets - for reasons exposed in this thread, and the fact they target a different market - but this will be the price for avoiding all the crap. The playing videos, receiving TV channels or satellite, etc, can be done with external devices that embed no crap either.

Yes, this is a more expensive option. But very large TV sets have become "dirt cheap" for what they are. Maybe it's time to get back to reality, instead of just letting things drift towards privacy invasion, surveillance, non-sustainable production, and so on. Oh and devices that end up with more bugs than my garden. No thanks =)
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #41 on: July 13, 2021, 05:24:24 pm »
Wow sounds like a pain.   I sure hope my current TV lasts a long time.   Going to assume the newer ones won't let you even use them if you don't plug into a network?

All that I've seen will work just fine if you don't connect them to the network. I'd still rather not have the "smart" features in the first place but whatever, at least you can mostly bypass them. Personally what I'd love is just a monitor with a great picture and about 10 HDMI ports and a nice simple interface that makes it fast and easy to select the input I want and adjust the picture settings.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #42 on: July 13, 2021, 05:46:44 pm »
If anyone finds a 43” 4K one of them please let me know. Want exactly the same.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #43 on: July 13, 2021, 06:50:14 pm »
Wow sounds like a pain.   I sure hope my current TV lasts a long time.   Going to assume the newer ones won't let you even use them if you don't plug into a network?

All that I've seen will work just fine if you don't connect them to the network. I'd still rather not have the "smart" features in the first place but whatever, at least you can mostly bypass them. Personally what I'd love is just a monitor with a great picture and about 10 HDMI ports and a nice simple interface that makes it fast and easy to select the input I want and adjust the picture settings.

Yeah same, that's really all I want out of a TV, a nice display with a bunch of inputs.   Basically a monitor but without the price tag of a monitor that size.  Like what TVs used to be.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #44 on: July 13, 2021, 08:20:32 pm »
To be fair, TVs used to be priced like monitors are today, but then prices plummeted, partly because they are subsidized by the data gathering and advertising platform abilities offered by the smart TVs. I still remember when a basic flat panel TV that would be considered small by modern standards was over $2k. I recently found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather bought in 1984 and it cost $700 in 1984 dollars and that was with $100 knocked off because he bought the floor model. It's easy to forget how much stuff used to cost.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #45 on: July 13, 2021, 10:32:22 pm »
If anyone finds a 43” 4K one of them please let me know. Want exactly the same.
How about the Acer I linked to earlier? If you need a lot of ports, an external HDMI switch is cheap.
https://www.newegg.com/acer-um-md1aa-001-43-uhd/p/0JC-000P-00CK2?quicklink=true
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Offline PlainName

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #46 on: July 13, 2021, 11:04:49 pm »
If anyone finds a 43” 4K one of them please let me know. Want exactly the same.

CCL are doing a good deal on 32" Iiyama.

Amazon do a 43" at some cost:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08CL3ZRVM
 

Offline cortex_m0

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #47 on: July 14, 2021, 01:30:42 am »
I recently found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather bought in 1984 and it cost $700 in 1984 dollars and that was with $100 knocked off because he bought the floor model. It's easy to forget how much stuff used to cost.

And that $700 may have been a fine value. My grandmother bought a Zenith console TV around 1990, and it was still working when she replaced it with a flat screen almost 25 years later. She bought another for the basement in the mid-90s, and it was still working when she passed in the late 2010s.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #48 on: July 14, 2021, 01:42:53 am »
I recently found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather bought in 1984 and it cost $700 in 1984 dollars and that was with $100 knocked off because he bought the floor model. It's easy to forget how much stuff used to cost.

And that $700 may have been a fine value. My grandmother bought a Zenith console TV around 1990, and it was still working when she replaced it with a flat screen almost 25 years later. She bought another for the basement in the mid-90s, and it was still working when she passed in the late 2010s.

Yeah. Was gonna say. Still working. Too bad that the TV signals for a TV that old here don't.
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Offline james_s

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Re: 'Home' devices now 'TOO' smart!!??
« Reply #49 on: July 14, 2021, 09:03:09 pm »
I recently found the receipt for the 25" console TV my grandfather bought in 1984 and it cost $700 in 1984 dollars and that was with $100 knocked off because he bought the floor model. It's easy to forget how much stuff used to cost.

And that $700 may have been a fine value. My grandmother bought a Zenith console TV around 1990, and it was still working when she replaced it with a flat screen almost 25 years later. She bought another for the basement in the mid-90s, and it was still working when she passed in the late 2010s.

I'm sure it was, I don't know what happened to it but I know it was still in use in the early 2000's. I wish I still had it, I've been looking for a vintage console TV like that to use at our cabin which is a bit of a time capsule. My point is that TVs and other stuff like that used to be very expensive.
 


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