this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Technology

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Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.

The text in the image:

I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology

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[–] N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I remember the ancient times when you could buy something, turn it on, then have it do what you want it to do. Setting the clock was the difficult part. Other than that, it just worked.

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Learning ESPHome has been the most liberating thing. Take back control of your home. Local first. Privacy respecting.

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I spy a research rabbit hole in my near future ... 🐰

Edit: ESPHome is a system to control your microcontrollers by simple yet powerful configuration files and control them remotely through Home Automation systems.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 3 months ago

Maybe give https://nowsci.com/only-sensor a shot? I built the guides/schematics/models for ESPHome devices as a learning experience for myself.

@SkyNTP@lemmy.ml I felt the same way. Now I just keep making new things for it, currently on garage door opener, blinds opener, and may even automate turning on my DIY solder fume extractor.

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[–] oxideseven@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Get in car after SO used it. Her BT connects. She goes into BT settings and disconnects. The phone auto reconnects. She turns BT off. The phone turns it back on. She is stuck in a loop. I can never connect phone ever again.

Technology is amazing.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Its only a matter of time.

[–] __init__@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Is Sony actually a good guy for holding this patent so that no one else can go and do this shit either?

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 5 points 3 months ago

either

Is there any indication that they won't implement this shit at some point?

Also, should we be trying to come up with the most insane "features" in this vein that we can imagine (knowing full well that some corporation will come up with them eventually), and then patent them to protect humanity from them?

Is there any organization that collects patents just to block them (in the consumer's favor)? A kind of white-hat patent troll? And, if not, should we create one?

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[–] Niiru@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Insert verification can copy pasta

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[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 9 points 3 months ago

These fucking televisions have less ram than my fucking 8 year old phone

At some point it's just better to factory reset this bitch and paste an RPI in the back with my own android TV so it can actually run with 8gb ram 256gb space

[–] randomwords@midwest.social 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)
[–] Piece_Maker@feddit.uk 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

At only double the price of an equivalently priced smart one! Bargain ~/s~

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 4 points 3 months ago (8 children)

The smart ones are sold at cost or at a loss, and your privacy is then sold to subsidize the profits. A dumb tv costs more money up front (since it's not subsidized by your privacy), but it costs far less in overall value. It's a tradeoff that the consumer needs to make. The lovely thing, is that (for now, at least) it is still a choice we can make.

[–] hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Or you could just block the Spyware TV from accessing the internet.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Not all tvs allow you to do that. Some require you to be online. Some took it a step further and are equipped with 4/5G modems to bypass your network restrictions.

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[–] oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Good luck finding them though, we've never found a place either offline or online that sells them.

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[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 months ago

Generally it's not too hard to disable the smart TV part of it and just use HDMI for TVs running Android. But on Roku TVs for whatever reason you need to connect them to the internet and a Roku account at least once to unlock the picture settings. Hardware features of a TV like brightness adjustment have no business relying on some random server.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 4 points 3 months ago

I'm actually quite happy with mine I don't think it's shown me a single ad, the only nuisance is it doesn't stay connected to my WiFi and only joins when I launch an app or something.

Its a Toshiba with Vidaa Os I think, not saying it's perfect it has all the UK channel apps but not Stremio which I would like it to have.

That said it hasn't done a single thing ad wise to annoy me unlike my firetv cube.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Last I looked, we could still buy commercial displays. They're dumb TVs. They cost more, of course.

[–] Pechente@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Can you give a recommendation? I too looked for big displays and found commercial ones to be used as digital billboards but the specs weren’t all that good (no oled, no hdr).

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[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago

We have a Samsung "smart" TV, hooked up to an AppleTV box. The TV's original remote is in a drawer somewhere, forever unused.

I have the apps that I need, the tiny Siri Remote turns on the TV and handles volume, and, apart from the aggressively, insanely, mind-blowingly horrible on-screen "keyboard" / text input (we don't have Apple phones we can use to mitigate this, sadly. Also, what the fucking fuck, Apple?!) we're happy. For now. I trust Apple to make the experience incrementally worse as a fact of life.

Not perfect, but leagues better than dealing with Samsung's interface.

[–] tree@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I wish there was a company like Fairphone or Framework laptops but for TVs.

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[–] Fridgeratr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I have a Samsung smart TV and the operating system on it is so annoying. It's so slow, has dumb ads, and I can't cast to it like at all.

I'm even more pissed that they just disabled the Steam Link app for essentially no reason; it worked great for streaming games from my PC.

I've been thinking it would be cool to flash a different OS onto it, but I'm not sure if that's actually possible.

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[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Luckily the YouTube app gets way worse with each update. Mine now tries to dark pattern you into signing in, and now features extra ads when you pause a video.

I'm switching to sideloaded SmartTube on a GoogleTV with Chromecast dongle.

[–] runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago

I've been using smart tube on my fireTV for about 6 months now and it's amazing. No ads, so many playback options that YouTube doesn't offer, built in sponsor block is a godsend.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is why I am dreading when my 2017 dumb TV dies. It's really telling that dumb TVs, which should be cheaper to produce and sell, are either not available or very expensive (as in commercial displays). Really proves the point that the consumer is really the product.

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[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Ah! I was reading that post yesterday https://lemmy.world/post/22309068 as I am looking for a 55’ 4K oled dumb display.

So far no joy.

Apparently some manufacturers makes internet mandatory at first boot and even if you block or disconnect it later it will nag you for firmware update every now and then.

The only possibility I have found for an EU customer at the moment is Sony Bravia. Yup Sony sucks but apparently Bravia’s let you choose to refuse the terms of service and not use the smart things, thus making them dumb tv.

But maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s not the case anymore or maybe they will decide to change that.

That sucks, if any of you knows about a commercial display/computer monitor/dumb tv in oled 4K hdr 55’ available in Europe, I might fall a little bit in love with you.

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[–] frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Or: buy a computer, once

It's not that hard, the original author is just lazy or ignorant or both.

My smart tv is a mid ranged i5 from 2012.

[–] DdCno1@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago

Electricity must be cheap where you are. If you have to use an x86 platform, please use a modern one that is both vastly more powerful and adept at decoding video while also needing a tiny fraction as much power and producing next to no heat and noise.

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