It’s wild just how much they’re trying to shove AI down our throats.
Who’s going to step up and start creating a “dumb” version of absolutely everything? One brand dedicated to just making the thing do the thing it absolutely must do and nothing else.
Would be great but the manufacturer would be at a disadvantage because that bundled bullshit effectively subsidizes the device. So you’d have to either raise prices or accept a lower profit margin.
Due to the high barrier of entry (e.g. because of patents) it’s unlikely that a privately owned company can make a big market entry, especially across countries. And a public company will be forced by the shareholders to maximize profit so either you bundle crapware or they fire you as CEO.
Of course if you look outside the TV market such devices already exist. High-quality digital signage devices can easily be had – for about three times the price of an equivalently-sized TV.
Some premium brands like Bang & Olufsen sell TVs without adware, I think Panasonic TVs are mostly ad-free for now. Outside of that, most big brands will have “professional” or “commercial” product lines that also don’t have ads. But in all cases you’ll have to pay extra over the TVs subsidized by ads.
pay extra over the TVs subsidized by ads.
Let’s be very clear, they are not and never were “subsidised by ads”. Ads just became a new way to extract more money from customers.
If you root your lg oled you can truly block automatic updates. You can also install ad free youtube with sponsorblock integrated plus a bunch of other stuff that is of varying utility depending on your use case.
In general though just don’t connect it to the internet and get a $100 box for jellyfin from china (ugoos am6b+ works great and can playback basically anything but av1 natively if you flash Coreelec, the android side can still run streaming apps if you insist or iptv apps like tv mate since iptv support in kodi/jellyfin suuuucks).
Lg has proven they don’t respect consent by silently opting you in to data collection with updates. The updates never add features or bug fixes, just ugly UI changes and shit like this. It’s almost never worth updating unless someone is specifically saying “you should update, it fixes/adds ____
In the future don’t support them but at the same time it’s the “who the fuck can you support/oh you use an iphone under capitalism” problem. Yeah you don’t need a big tv, you don’t need an oled, you can buy a far more expensive commercial display, etc. I dunno
Can’t have a smart TV if you never connect it to the internet.
Incredible. What a shit idea.
Anyways, kids, remember: never let your smart devices talk to the internet. We actually love our LG OLED - it’s fantastic hardware. But it has not once, and never will, get the chance to phone home.
Totally worth mentioning, some LG OLED TVs are able to be jailbroken and run homebrew software!
It can block firmware updates and telemetry, so no spying and no surprise “feature” additions.
Yeah, my LG OLED is a genuinely wonderful thing, with which 99% of its use is via an Apple TV. The other 1% is me casting my phone to it, because it’s a Pixel and Apple are pricks who won’t let AirPlay work outside of their ecosystem.
I reworked my entire home network. Going from an Asus router to an opnsense firewall, just to put the HP printer and the LG TV on a VLAN with absolutely no internet access.
These two poor guys ping each other every day, in the hopes one of them gets a connection.
Sorry for that noob question: i do not grasp the idea of vlan fully: will i still be able to connect to devices in the locked down vlan (the tv, the printer) from the devices in the “normal”, open Wifi (like my phone streaming to said tv).
Right now i have a gl-iNet router (brume 2) that uses adguard to block advertising sites (and also home phoning destinations of popular brands), but not sure if that does the trick already.
Whether you can access these devices or not depends on your firewall rules.
The usual (very simplifed) setup is as follows
VLANs:
- VLAN_Trusted
- VLAN_Untrusted
- VLAN_IoT
Firewall rules:
VLAN_Trusted: Can access everything, WAN (internet) as well as devices on VLAN_Untrusted and VLAN_IoT. Usually, your PC or smartphone is here
VLAN_IoT: can only access WAN (internet), but none of the other VLANs, usually connected devices, like smart appliances that you control via their dedicated apps, like Philips HUE lamps, etc
VLAN_Untrusted: Can not access anything. Usually devices that you don’t want to allow to access anything, lika a TV, or a printer to prevent automatic firmware updates.
Some people also hav a VLAN_Guests, which is similar to IoT, where devices can only access the internet.
I hope this helps
Thanks a lot! That is very helpful. I was lost in reading up the details of configuration without understanding of a general concept.
But what do you use instead? The onboard apps work well and having two remotes always sucked.
This is a fascinating article. As someone who has never owned an apple device in my life out of principle, this is actually making me consider one.
I have two AppleTVs and while they are great at what they do, I won’t buy another. The reason is that they are still locked down to what Apple allows you to do. Want to watch YouTube? Your only realistic option is Google’s app, complete with ads. If you connect a real computer to the TV, you have significantly more control over what’s going on, but you may lose some of the convenience of a dedicated TV device. Hopefully with things like the GabeCube, more Linux OSes will be dedicated to big screen TV use.
I use an Apple TV with mine. You can control the TV and soundbar from its one small remote.
Thanks to HDMI-CEC you can control additional media players with your TV’s remote. Sometimes it might not be perfect for things like long presses and stuff, but for basic controls it works.
That’s my experience with an Nvidia Shield and a Raspberry with KODI. I wouldn’t really recommend the Raspberry though.
So long as the GabeCube is at a decent price it is going to be my TV’s media center. My old plan of building a new main rig and repurposing my old rig with an arc B580 upgrade went out the window for my budget when ram prices went through the roof.
Modern replacement as a kodi box for both shield and pi is ugoos am6b+. ~120$ on aliexpress (probably more with tariffs) and once you flash it with coreelec it can natively playback pretty much any format except av1. You still dual boot to android so can also run all the streaming apps too, if you want, and the android is really stripped back vs the shield (especially the later releases where ad bullshit creeped in quite a bit) though not fully degoogled because the play store is still present.
Main downside is some issues with hdmi-cec. It works 99% but power on doesn’t when in coreelec. Ugoos locked the bootloader for some reason and refuses to unlock it. Fixes for this depend on equipment and use scenario. Some people on the forum that watch tv a lot just disable power on/off cec and leave it running 24/7, it’s pretty low power. I have an avr that works with hdmi-cec and home assistant so I have hdmi-cec on/off turned on, it will turn off when I turn the tv off with remote, and when I turn the tv on the avr turns on via CEC then home assistant sends a wake-on-lan packet to the device, which turns it on. A bit of a delay, but works.
Only device on the market that can properly play back Dolby vision though, including commercial bluray players. If you download 2160p remux with the dv layer for lg oled this is literally the only thing that plays it back correctly. Alternatively just get hdr rips
I have an Ugoos am6b+, it’s a bit clunky with stuff like HDMI-CEC and the remote is cheap plastic trash. But it does its job at playing Dolby Vision REMUX files.
For everything else, I use an AppleTV 4K. It’s fast and reliable and the only box that doesn’t shove ads on the Home Screen.
The controversy centers on a Reddit post in the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, where a user lamented the unexpected addition of Copilot following an automatic update. The post, which garnered thousands of upvotes and comments, describes the AI tool appearing as a non-deletable app on the TV’s interface.
“Widespread backlash” 🙄
My company received an email from Microsoft this week.
“From our data you are not selling Ai features as much as your competitors and we suggest that you start changing this or you will be left behind.”
It was a completely bullshit email. But the stupids at my company are now worried that Microsoft is tracking the features we’re selling with our computers. Like if that wasn’t the most glaring red flag “we have spent way too much money on this and we need you to prove we aren’t dumbasses” I don’t know what is.
I still will not sell Ai outside of its basic uses. And I’m backed up by the old heads in my department. Ai is not for everything.
One day, literally every Gsuite product immediately and incessantly started nagging us to use Gemini. Fortunately our tech staff quickly switched it all off. We have slowly been re-enabling features that are useful like meeting transcriptions. I just wish these corporations could have more restraint. In previous waves of improvement in tech, usage dictated investment in new products. These days, they seem to feel the need to coerce us to use their products as they insist we should. I think users are getting fatigued by this dynamic. I used to be the first to install every update and try new apps and products. These days, I’m excited when I can stop using a product, and I don’t think it’s just due to age. It means I can stop having to be vigilant about some company I know is searching for ways to exploit me.
Yeah the MBA guys who pushed enshitification were empowered because their strategies made more money so they must know what they are doing right? Now things don’t happen because they are better they happen because these guys think there is money. And the guys who used to pick the best ideas are out being rich somewhere
This, this finally made me reach back my LG TV and disconnected the Ethernet cable.
root that motherfucker. it was so easy!
Easy way to never get this. Don’t connect the tv to internet. Literally get an Apple TV or fire stick or something else as a media player.
So glad I blocked my LG C1 from the internet ages ago. Haven’t received updates in forever, don’t care. It’s a TV, it shows pictures. I even still have it LAN enabled so it can be controlled via Home Assistant automations, it just can never leave the home network, and that’s how I like it.
I can’t even remember how long ago I set it up to do this, I think it was when I heard rumor they’d be including ads in the UI, maybe 2023 or so.
That’s interesting - I have a C1 (2021). Where or how do you block these updates and have it connected to your local network?
You’d need to set up a firewall rule on your router to block that device from accessing the internet. If you’ve got a fancy enough router you could set up a VLAN and second SSID for all your IoT things and only whitelist connections and devices you want to allow. That can get a little tricky to set up though
It’s blocked at my router. I’ve had two routers the past few years, an ASUS AX5700 (RT-AX86u) and a NETGEAR AXE7800 (RAXE300). Both allow for blocking a device from internet without blocking LAN access. So you give it an IP on your network, and then just block it from internet. I use the Netgear currently and have the ASUS as a backup device.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve read that some TVs will scan and seek to connect to open networks if it’s not connected at all, so I figure that way it’s totally blocked, and I still have access to its APIs for Home Assistant and Homekit use.
