this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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Its an old LG, but given the recent light on the lengths they'll go to spy on us, I figured this guy was better off without any ability to even connect wirelessly. Don't know if the Ethernet still works but I plan on keeping my TVs as dumb as possible, HDMI only.

If you're wondering how to open lg TVs you just have to remove all the screws then start pulling open at the bottom and open the clips going up. With the TV face down on a soft surface just keep pulling on the back case from the bottom, it'll take some effort to pop open. The top edge folds open more like a hidge than clips.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (5 children)

This is Plan B when you already have an LG product.

Plan A is to not buy LG anything, ever.

PS: Just out of curiosity and based on other people pointing out here and in another post of mine how hard is to get a non-smart TV, I looked around and here is the largest non-smart consumer TV I could find (which is 1080p and 40" from what looks like a Spanish manufacturer, for €209 with VAT), here is a non-smart 65" 4K Samsung hospitality display ($1023 in the US) and here is what looks like the same spec consumer TV from Samsung ($379.99 in the US).

So, sorry, it is in fact possible to not just avoid LG products (which itself would be easy, just buy any other brand out there) but even smart TVs altogether, just either pay more (over 2x as more judging by that Samsung TV) or settle for smaller 1080p TVs from smaller TV makers.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Basically everything Sceptre makes — and indeed possibly literally everything — outside of their Android TV line is a dumb TV. They're carried by Walmart although inevitably not in store, and they're reasonably cheap.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago

I wish I could find their European equivalent ...

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They all do this. Why do you think displays are so cheap? The business plan is not the display, it's the data.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Here is a Samsung 65" 4K Non-Smart Hospitality Display in the US and here is the closest consumer Samsung TV also in the US.

The former is $1,023.00, the latter is $379.99.

HOWEVER, here is the Samsung commercial smart version of the first TV model.

Notice that it's actually a bit more expensive at $1080.

Also judging by figures I heard years ago for the cost to buy private information about people (well below $1 per person if I remember it correctly), I suspect Smart TV makers don't make all that much money from selling private information (especially if you consider that they're competing with the likes of Google as well as many other companies that also have massive surveillance operations) as a percentage of the total price of the TV.

I suspect that the difference in price between commercial and consumer TVs is mainly due to higher resilience in the device's design, longer and/or stricter warranties and support availability plus that they simply can extract more money from business customers (an effect you see in A LOT of things, not just this).

I suspect the current situation where non-smart consumer TVs are pretty much non-existent are a mix of big companies pursuing even small increases in profit (from selling private data) so they all inevitably end up doing that same thing that brings them a small additional revenue stream and consumers themselves being convinced that "smart" is a good thing on a TV and actually preferring those over non-smart TVs.

Certainly consumers favoring "smart" TVs would explain why even little no-brand Chinese TV manufacturers who really don't have the scale and systems for mass-surveillance are selling Smart TVs rather than non-Smart ones outside the cheapest possible TV sizes (you can find monitor-size non-smart TVs)

[–] JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Well, considering LG's advertisement data selling makes more money than actually selling TVs with 0 hardware production costs... (According to the GN investigation)

There is a reason that every single company, cars, IoT, fucking washing machines are all moving into the data harvesting and selling business...

I think those figures are quite outdated.

[–] zorblitz@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Every smart TV brand is doing this. There is no escape

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

Don't get a smart TV, just use an external media player for the "smarts" - easiest is to put LibreELEC in a Pi and get a remoted like this.

Personally last TV I got (5 years ago) I went for something that did not advertise any "smarts" (a Blaupunkt which turned out to have some "smarts" so it has always been disconnected), though if it was nowadays I would probably spend the extra to get a commercial display - a commercial display is not only "smarts" free, it is also designed to last a long time under constant use rather than with built-in obsolescence like consumer products, so it should not need to be replaced for a long time.

I'm lucky that I've been an really early adopter of media players (well before Android TV) and quickly figure out that the life-cycle of medial players (i.e. the "smarts" in Smart TVs) is way shorter than the life-cycle of the actual display, mainly because of how often new codecs become widespread (video decoding of 1080p or higher content is only performant if done in hardware or it you throw a ton of general computing power at it), so it's economically wiser to have those things separate since you'll replaced the media player hardware much more often than display hardware, all of which is even more so when software updates of closed "smarts" solutions can literally make the device unusable simply by using too much memory, a common built-in obsolescence trick.

PS: I had a look around and above 40" 1080p the only non-smart TVs I found were indeed commercial things like "hospitality displays" and judging by example I checked from Samsung with the same spec, the explicitly "non-smart" "hospitality display" (65", 4K) was a bit over 2x the price of the "smart" consumer version.

So yeah, it's feasible to avoid smart TVs by going commercial (but costs over 2x) or be limited to the smaller sizes and resolutions, as well as simpler tech of small brands in the low-end of the consumer TV market.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Even commercial displays are scraping data.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Now comes the fun part. Do you know of any good quality “dumb” 4K OLED in the 65” range?

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com -4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why would I ever buy a 65" 4K OLED?!

At the optimal viewing distance for a 65" TV (about 2.68m) I already can't see the pixels of a 1080p screen.

Maybe it would make sense if I had 20/10 vision, but I don't have such above average vision since I was a kid.

Reason guides my purchase of consumer devices, not hype.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Different strokes. I sit about 9-10 feet from my TV and I can definitely see a difference between 1080p and 4K content. You don’t have to see individual pixels but you can tell there’s a sharpnesss and complexity difference to the images. Not to mention I have yet to see a 1080p HDR screen and i watch content that is Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and you definitely can see a big difference there from SDR content.

So my question still stands, no hype around it.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Don't take this too badly, but "you can tell there’s a sharpnesss and complexity difference to the images" sounds a lot like the "gold connector digital cables sound better" thing - people subjectivelly perceiving something which they think reflects quality because of expecting it to be better, rather than because it's actually better (audiophile forums are sometimes hilarious).

Other possibilities are simply that you're seeing upsized 1080p content on that 4K screen and are confusing upsizer artifacts for actual quality differences (or vice-versa for seing downsized 4K content on a 1080p screen).

Yet other reasons are simply different screen brightness range, dynamic response or refresh rates - for example an OLED panel will general be better in most/all of these than TFT and more expensive TVs (which the 4K ones are) generally come with the former.

There is definitelly a difference between HDR and SDR if you're watching content with the appropriate color range (an HDR screen can literally display more color information, plus SDR stuff is mapped to a gamma curve to "compress" it whilst HDR is not) and most people can definitelly see it, but the difference between 1080p and 4K is only perceived for certain up-close distances and/or if you have above average eyesight.

I would suggest a blind test at a TV store were you just try and guess which is better without knowing which TVs are 1080p and 4K, but you still have to account for display tech since as I wrote OLEDs generally look better.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

And it still doesn’t answer my question. Show me where I can get a dumb 65” OLED capable of HDR. You’ve gone way off of a tangent on something I don’t need convincing of.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Even though your question changed from including 4K to not including it I had a look around and whilst avoiding LG managed to find this from Samsung which is not smart, 65" 4K but not OLED.

If you're willing to order from China there are manufacturers selling actual OLED large size signage displays, but the ones I found are using that tech for transparent displays.

I suspect commercial users are unwilling to blow money up on OLED.

From my poking around it looks like the best search query for this kind of thing is "hospitality display".

I'm not going to spend more time looking for these, not to answer a question from you random internet person (if I was going to spend a 1000 bucks on one, then I would be willing to spend more time on it).

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

some of us are really into home theater. i once had a 75 inch screen. it was FUN. took up half the room. my current 55 inch 1080p is enough screen tho. i want a projector next

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Well, ultimatelly it's a "how much do I care about being surveilled in the comfort of my own home and risk having my network hacked" vs "how much enjoyment do I derive from a a big fat consumer TV".

Personally "how much enjoyment do I derive from a a big fat consumer TV" is such a low value for me that most other things are more important for me, but I can understand that it's not the same for others.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

i'm just worried they venture into smart projectors next. i just want to paint my wall theater silver and not have to worry about screen resolutions.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Are there any companies that don't pull shit like this?

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

None. Ads pay for part of the TV.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago

THIS is also not a solution. It is not just LG that does this, they all do.